Vacation Homes

Dunbar: An idyllic community where average wage-earners once raised their families

Dunbar is a quiet, tidy neighbourhood. It is classic Vancouver and is often the image most people have of “the west side.”

Now one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in Canada’s most expensive city, enough of the original homes remain to remind us that not long ago this was a community where average wage-earners raised their families.

But it’s surprisingly diverse as my guide, Sandy James, points out as we walk for nearly four hours down commercial and residential streets, through a wood, along the mighty Fraser River and into the stables of Southlands.

Sandy is a professional pedestrian. Okay, I made that title up. Her real title is greenways planner for Vancouver and she’s helping organize Walk21. It’s the 11th annual meeting of international planners whose business it is to make walking in cities as pleasant and interesting as possible, which is being held here in October.

We meet on the 4300-block of Dunbar Street. We manage to only look into the charming Butter Baked Goods with its cabbage-rose wallpaper where the cookies are so good that even Oprah asked for a sample to be sent. We pass an independent book store with quirky hours, Sushi Q (a favourite of Sandy’s), a drycleaner and a green grocery with fruits and vegetables piled up under the hand-cranked awning.

Dunbar Village isn’t exactly charming, although merchants have made an effort with banners and hanging baskets. But it is indicative of how the city has evolved, with everything from 1970s-style strip malls to old family businesses like McDermott’s Body Shop, which is opposite the public library. Sandy (who’s also a master gardener) points out the body shop’s pretty side garden, but she takes me to see the tree outside the library.

It’s an Eddie’s White Wonder dogwood, a variety first propagated in 1955 and made commercially available by Henry M. Eddie, whose nursery was in Southlands.

After the noise of Dunbar Street, we turn east on to one of many residential streets. They ought to be pleasant for walking, but many of the houses are hidden, leaving pedestrians to feel as outsiders.

The sidewalks don’t help. They date back to the 1930s and are so narrow that it’s hard to walk side-by-side, especially with what Sandy calls the “horticultural creep” on to city property.

After walking south on Collingwood, we take a nearly hidden stairway down to Marine Drive and cross into the world of hobby farms. In the woods, we snack on a few ripe salmon berries before heading south along the drainage ditch that separates city land from the Musqueam Reserve to the Fraser River.

We cross a small stream over a wooden bridge built in 1991 by Southlands Riding Club and the 6th Field Engineering Squadron in memory of Master Corp. Brian Douglas Simpson. He was only 26.

A fish boat glides by. A woman on horseback passes us. We admire the view upriver to the Gulf Islands and across to the airport.

Past Carrington — the entry to Deering Island — the overgrown path gives way to a new, wide, gravelled one flanked by yachts tied up at private docks, then McCleery Golf Course until the path’s end at an old shipyard.

It picks up again in front of a new development, but ends abruptly at Marine Drive Golf Course, where the private club’s chain link fence runs all the way to the rocks.

Until the Second World War, boggy Southlands was home to many nurseries owned by Japanese-Canadians. But after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, they were rounded up, forced into internment camps and their properties sold.

Nurseries gave way to stables and, over the years, small houses have given way to massive estates. One has its own lake; others have pools, tennis courts as well as stables.

Under the city’s zoning bylaw, having a stable allows the owners to build even larger houses. What zoning can’t do is mandate what’s in the stables and, by all accounts, the number of horses is steadily declining.

Still, there are close to 500 horses and no sidewalks. So, mind the horse droppings.

We finish up our walk the way every good one should end — with food.

We return to 41st and Collingwood to Thomas Afchine’s Crêpe and Café.

Outside along the café’s east side, there are small tables and chairs.

Inside, there are wooden tables and chairs, a fireplace with leather couches. The glass case is full of luscious looking pastries. Off to the side, buckwheat batter is poured on to a hot plate and the crepe cooked to order.

There is no television set, but there is a well-stocked magazine rack.

In a mélange of French and English, Afchine, who moved from Paris less than six years ago, says he’s tried to create an atmosphere that encourages conversation and lingering over coffee, pastries or lunch.

And he’s succeeded. The food is amazing and his customers — like Sandy — come mostly by foot and as often as they can.

“You do inside what I try to do outside,” Sandy tells him.

She explains that what she is trying to do is turn every Vancouver neighbourhood into a pedestrian-friendly one where they can get almost everything they want and need — even a little piece of Paris — without having to get into their cars.

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